This image broadcast on Libyan state television Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011, shows Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi as he addresses the nation in Tripoli, Libya. Libya’s Gadhafi vowed to fight on against protesters demanding his ouster and die as martyr.

CAIRO — Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy offered no concessions to protesters who have shaken his regime by capturing several major cities, denouncing them as drunkards, terrorists and “drug-fueled mice” who should be executed.

“These gangs are cockroaches,” he said in a nationwide address Tuesday. “They’re nothing. They’re not 1 percent of the Libyan people.”

But Khadafy’s speech may not save a regime that after four decades in power seemed to be quickly disintegrating. With violence flaring in city after city, and key defections from his inner circle, he appeared out of touch and increasingly out of control.

In the speech, Khadafy praised one of his closest and most powerful aides, interior secretary and army Gen. Abdul Fatah Younis. Several hours later, however, Younis made clear in his own televised statement that he had joined the opposition, urging “all the armed forces to be at the service of the people . . . to help them achieve victory.”

Libya has been effectively cleaved by the eight-day uprising, which has killed at least 300 people. Khadafy’s regime holds the capital, Tripoli, and crucial oil fields in the west, analysts said. Hundreds of miles to the east across mostly empty desert, opposition forces control the second-largest city, Benghazi, and the equally rich oil fields in that region.

The opposition claimed its latest prize Tuesday when protesters, arming themselves with weapons seized from police stations and weapons depots, occupied the Mediterranean port of Tobruk, expanding their control to the Egyptian border, according to refugee accounts.

Refugees poured out through border crossings into Egypt and Tunisia. Aid convoys with doctors, medical workers and humanitarian supplies waited in lines to cross into Libya from the Egyptian border at Marsa Matrouh. Blood shortages were said to be critical.

The U.S. State Department said it would begin evacuating U.S. citizens from Tripoli by ferry to Malta today.

Pounding his fist and shouting, Khadafy in his 75-minute speech vowed to die a martyr in Libya and urged his supporters to help crush the uprising. He threatened to “cleanse Libya, house by house,” if protesters don’t surrender.

“When they are caught, they will beg for mercy, but we will not be merciful,” he warned.

The U.N. Security Council condemned the crackdown and called for “an immediate end” to the violence. In a statement supported by all 15 members, the council called on the Libyan government “to meet its responsibility to protect its population,” to act with restraint, and to respect human rights and international humanitarian law.

Its action left open how much further the council might go later if the violence continues or worsens, diplomats said. Western nations have been eager to signal Khadafy that he will be punished if street battles intensify. But China and Russia, which have been reluctant to intervene in what they view as other nations’ domestic matters, may resist.

“The callousness with which Libyan authorities and their hired guns are reportedly shooting live rounds of ammunition at peaceful protesters is unconscionable,” said Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters that the crackdown was “completely unacceptable” and must stop. The Arab League condemned the violence and demanded an end to restrictions on media coverage in Libya.

Tripoli was reported quiet but tense after two days of clashes. Diplomats and witnesses said the military used fighter jets, helicopter gunships and foreign mercenaries to help put down the protests that raged across the city Monday and early Tuesday.

Regime opponents charged that pro-Khadafy militias used mortars and other heavy weapons, as well as automatic weapons, in some areas. Photos transmitted from inside Libya showed bodies that appeared riddled with shrapnel or that had been blown apart.

Numerous reports from inside Libya suggested militiamen and paid African mercenaries had fired into crowds, sealed off neighborhoods and shot from rooftops to quell the protests. Independent Arab media in Libya said militias were guarding access roads around Tripoli late Tuesday to keep out protesters.

Outside Libya, some of the nation’s top diplomats rushed to distance themselves from Khadafy. Libya’s ambassadors to the U.S., China, India, Malaysia and Bangladesh have now resigned, and the deputy ambassador to the U.N. denounced the attacks as genocide.

“We have never seen a government bomb its own people like this,” Ali Essawi, who quit as envoy to India, told the al-Jazeera news network.

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